alright. i didn't mean to sound so harsh. i am in no way bashing all diyers who have built their own players. in fact, i have seen some really nice ones that i would love to have. stuff like gps, dvd, etc. ashley powers is a prime example. he decided that the empeg was not for him, built his own player, and it looks amazing. i actually tried to adapt his ideas to my miata, but wisely gave up. like tantaasfal said, i would have needed scuba gear to get out. praise be to the empeg gods.

what really bothers me are people that build their own then compare them with the empeg and declare theirs better. many times their arguments sound like this. "i can build an mp3 player for $200. only an idiot would pay $1200 for an empeg." this is where the homebuilt problems come in. most of these people know a bit about computers and a bit about car audio. this is where you get solutions like tying memory down to the motherboard. this is where you get people saying that you have to disable scandisk after bad shutdowns, mount hard drives vertically, etc. all of this is from a quality standpoint. a quality player should not have to have its memory secured to the mobo with string. a quality player should not have to worry about shutting the player off in the middle of use (this is pretty much by definition in an auto environment). the list goes on and on.

then there are features. i, for one, do not want to pick all of my songs using some random PIN. i certainly do not want to do that with a keypad hanging out of the dash. i do not want to have to use some sort of mouse remote and take my eyes off the road to pick music. i dont always want just a 2000 song playlist in random mode, sometimes i want to pick specific playlists and artists safely.

building your own player is fine, and even commendable. it takes time, hard work, and dedication. just dont say the empeg is stupid because yours costs $xxx less than an empeg (i realise you, mystkrh, weren't saying this :). the empeg does not have inherent design flaws from trying to graft a stationary desktop computer into a portable automobile environment. the empeg has the features that i want, namely access to any song or artist, or album in a matter of seconds.

sorry about the length. just want to make sure everyone knows that i am not putting down homebuilt systems.

jeremy

12 gig, green...